After a blowout win in Game Six, the Boston Red Sox have the momentum on their side entering Game Seven. Can the Indians win one more time?

Scott Raab: Didn't Aaron Laffey look good out there? And Trot -- nice move by Wedgie -- got two hits. Sweet stuff happening for the Tribe. You just need to squint real hard when you look at the box score.

*****

Scott Raab: "The umpire missed a lot of pitches in that first inning," Victor Martinez said after the game.

Fuck that shit, bro. Dana DeMuth was the very least of the Indians problems. And even if he was on top of the list, you save that whiny crap for some other team or sport. This is baseball and you're a Cleveland Indian. Your guy gives up a couple of scratch singles, that ain't the ump's fault. Nor is Ortiz walking because your man out there on the mound is overthrowing. Nor is J.D. Drew sitting on a fat 3-1 fastball and putting a good swing on it.

There's zero shame in losing, much less getting hammered by the Sox. Pain and frustration, sure. Fuck, yeah. But there is shame in trying to lay the blame on something other than your team's inability to outplay the other side.

The Truth is -- always -- that the better team is the team that scored more runs that day. And the only right thing to say if that wasn't your club is something along the lines of, "They were better than us tonight. We'll get 'em tomorrow."

I love this Indians team, win or lose, partly because they don't make excuses for losing. And so I'd much rather see Carmona, Sabathia, and Hafner all shit the bed at once than hear Victor Martinez, a great ballplayer and, by all accounts, one helluva good guy, bitching about balls and strikes after a 12-2 Game Six loss.

*****

Jay Levin: So, you may have heard, Paul Byrd took HGH.

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Some folks are saying the timing is terrible for the Indians, for this "revelation" to come to light. I say, it couldn't be better timing.

As a fan, I'd much rather be getting my dander up about this than thinking about every awful thing -- and there were several -- that happened to the Indians over the past two games. And I can't think of a single reason why the boys in the clubhouse would feel any differently about it.

I'd like to complain about the two crap singles in the first that led to Drew's grand slam, and I'd like to tell you the ump was squeezing Carmona. But when Carmona started the third inning by throwing nine balls out of the first ten pitches, I realized there was no point. Like Sabathia, he simply didn't have his usual command, and the margin for error is so small against that lineup.

If you watched Carmona's domination of the Yankees and then the game from last night, I don't see how you could come away thinking that the only difference was the ump. Not by a long shot.

What a weird series. I'm trying to picture the 2001 Diamondbacks, losing three games out of four with Johnson and Schilling on the mound, yet still making it to Game Seven.

*****

Scott Raab: Casey Blake postgame: "We have to have a warrior's mentality. We have no future. We have no past. We just have to show up, relax and play."

Assuming that the bus driver manages the showing-up part, I wish that somebody -- Jhonny, perhaps? -- would arrive at the clubhouse with a one-hitter and a big red-veined bud in his kit to assuage this team's relaxation problem. It reminds me of the old joke where a guy gets run over by a truck and is splayed out on the street breathing his last while a crowd assembles, and an old woman starts yelling, "Give him some chicken soup! Give him some chicken soup!" A man turns to her and says, "Ma'am, I'm afraid that wouldn't help," and she says, "Well, it wouldn't hurt."

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*****

Jay Levin: Game Seven. Ugh. I loathe Game Seven. It's the one thing I wanted to avoid. Six games is a great length for a series. You don't want to get swept, and getting almost-swept is just as bad. Losing in six, that's fine -- you didn't come that close, but it's respectable.

But Game Seven -- awful, and Sox fans know this better than anyone. The winner-take-all thing.

I never used to understand why Red Sox fans were such miserable sons of bitches, way worse than Indians fans. They had plenty of good teams, off and on, their whole lives. The Indians had terrible teams, for decades, and so did the Cubs! What did Red Sox fans really have to complain about?

Finally, my friend Jason explained it to me: It was Game Seven. Four World Series, four Game Sevens, four defeats. Awful. That 2003 ALCS -- Game Seven -- awful. Not to mention Game 163 in 1978, and Game 155 in 1948, which were basically the same thing. The only time the Sox ever won a Game Seven was the 1986 ALCS, and that was followed immediately by the 1986 World Series. Which they lost. In Seven.

There's a special piece of knowledge that Indians fans share with Cubs fans: It's not that hard rooting for a team that's always terrible. Before 1994, you had to have a certain fatal resignation to be an Indians fan, an intense loyalty and love for the game. It was depressing, and it was awful sometimes, but it wasn't gruesome.

The Drive. The Fumble -- those were gruesome. Ask any Cleveland guy, he'll tell you that those two moments were far worse than any ten or twenty years of horrible Indians teams. You spend years and years with a team, and then one year they've got what it takes to go all the way -- you really, really think so -- and it all gets taken away in an instant. The gut punch.

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We got our Game Seven moment in 1997 -- first ever. Unlike the Browns defeats, that moment doesn't really have a regular nickname. Maybe because we prefer just not to think about it. If we call it anything, it's just "Jose Mesa." And it was, just, by far. The worst.

And here we have another Game Seven to deal with. Either I'm going to have that awful feeling again -- and have to watch this loathsome Boston cast in a World Series and piss and moan about payrolls for another six months -- possibly the rest of my life -- or we're going to win it, but at the cost of four hours of my liver and my intestines racing to see which can totally degrade into a hot mash of pure bile the fastest. It would be totally worth it, of course, to win it and get to the World Series, but only in that fucked up, hazing-to-win-my-frat-brothers'-approval kind of way.

The best thing I can say about Game Six is, at least it ended quickly. There are two good things I can say about Game Seven, though. The first is that if my team had Dice-K going up against Westbrook, I'd feel even worse about it. The other good thing is, at least there is a Game Seven.

Last night's game would have been a terrible way to end a great season, one in which the Indians methodically dispatched the Twins in August, the Tigers in September and the Yankees in October. If they're going to go out, let them do it with a send-off befitting their accomplishments. One last matchup between the two best teams in the game.

And a giant fog of HGH.

*****

Scott Raab: I've waited my whole life for "one more win" -- and I feel well-prepared to wait until death knocks for me. That isn't defeatism, much less Zen; it's confidence. And gratitude.

I know how to live with the heartbreak of being a Tribe fan. Not only will the sun rise tomorrow if they lose, it'll come up on a day full of good stuff I never thought I'd have: the best gig any hack could wish for, a wife and a son and a dog who love me for who I am, a few bucks in the bank, and a pair of the finest, firmest buttocks you've ever seen on a man.

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With all that going for me, you think I'm gonna whine? You think Clevelanders haven't listened to Cubs (and pre-2004 Red Sox) fans' endless shrilling about how hard they've had it for so many years and felt like kicking their testicles into jelly?

I'm supposed to feel sorry for them? Did Boston and Chicago wither into poverty and become objects of scorn on a national level? Did some cocksucker steal the Bears or the Pats while I wasn't looking? Do all the NBA titles and the Super Bowl trophies mean nothing?

I'm not looking for any empathy, sympathy, or quarter from these assholes. I just wish they'd shut the fuck up already.

Look, I wouldn't trade my experience as a Cleveland sports fan for anybody else's, and I'd feel sorry for anyone from any town who felt otherwise. The only folks I feel sorry for are those without a team close to their hearts.

I know guys who absolutely love baseball and have no passionate connection to any team. I can't imagine such a thing. That must be like living alone on a desert island with abundant food, perfect weather, and a constant, throbbing erection.

*****

Scott Raab: So let's see... Westbrook vs. Matsuzaka.

Normally, I'd love that match-up (and I'd love it even more if Byrd were starting), but if Dicey falters, Tito has Beckett raring to relieve, and those Red Sox hitters couldn't be any looser -- was that Julio fucking Lugo drilling a double down the third-base line last night? -- and Fenway's gonna be as zany as Hallowe'en at Albert Belle's house, and the Indians collectively have a Golden Delicious as big as Don Zimmer's head stuck in their gullets and absolutely no prayer tonight.

*****

Scott Raab: Karma, shmarma. But I had an e-mail exchange last night with a close friend and die-hard Yankees fan that troubles me.

I understand where he's coming from, because I've lived in the New York City area long enough to realize that the hate that Sox and Yankees fans feel for each other is quite real.

And it's not that I think a Yankees fan rooting for the Tribe to whip on Boston creates any bad karma for the Indians -- that's just nuts.

No, what troubles me is what flashed through my mind when the Tribe clinched the LDS at Yankee Stadium: Dayenu -- it would have sufficed. It would've been enough of a gift from the baseball gods just to see that.

And this is where truth merges with Truth, at least for me. Because that Yankee Stadium win truly was enough -- if the baseball gods deem it so.

And because it wasn't enough -- no matter what the gods of baseball rule. No way was that enough. No way.

And yet, according to the baseball gods, sometimes not enough must be enough. We live. We die.

We have been given the game of baseball: Dayenu. If trouble and heartbreak and enough/not enough all come along with that, well, hell, that's a big part of what makes loving the game such a fucking miracle.

Baseball: Dayenu. That I believe -- and beyond that are only things I want and wish for.

I belive in good and evil, but not out there on the diamond. (Call me Annie Savoy without the tits and garter belt -- did I mentioned my fine firm buttocks? -- but baseball's universe is not Manichaean in the end.)

I believe in good ballplayers playing good baseball.

I believe the Tribe is gonna get one more win tonight.

I can't believe that anyone believed that shit I wrote up there about the Indians having no prayer.

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